Erron Ratdweller (180
a.S.-223 a.S.), part time rat exterminator and amateur researcher of the human
Erpheronian tribe of southern
Sarvonia, is noted for his in-depth
research into two of the most unusual of subjects - the
vile rat and the
city rat. He began his
career attempting to find ways to destroy the rats that lived under the city of
Nyermersys, but ironically, the very
pests he was trying to destroy became a subject of devoted research for him
until his death. He was bestowed the title of Master by the city of
Nyermersys and was given the honourary
name of Ratdweller.

Appearance.
Erron Ratdweller was thin in build and short of stature, standing about 1.6
peds in height. In some
ways, he was jestingly thought to look very much like the creatures he was
trying to exterminate. He was described as pale skinned, with a patchy
reddish-brown beard and thin wisps of red hair covering his scalp. He had a look
of intense scrutiny as if analyzing everything he saw. He had a mouth that
formed into a thin frown and eyes that constantly darted to and fro in a nervous
fashion. His nose was thin and sharp and he possessed a strong chin with a
single dimple.

Erron's clothes were simple when on the job. Although he lived a comfortable
life of a middle class citizen later in life, he was known to be frugal and
conservative in dress and rarely exhibited signs of his wealth. He wore simple
wool tunics and pants, usually dark coloured. His bony hands and long fingers
were always shrouded in thick gloves and his shoes were thick soled and always
soiled with stains of varying colours and thicknesses.

Erron had become accustomed to walking and working in tight, cramped areas of
the sewers and as a result he had developed a slight hunch. His short legs were
flexible and strong and he could contort his body to fit in small spaces.
Although his eyes were always squinting, he never seemed to have trouble seeing
and was never seen wearing any sort of glass lenses. He was always thought to be
several years older than he really was due to his hunched and balding
appearance.

Personality. Erron was a serious man who rarely took a moment to
enjoy life's little joys. As an only child growing up with mostly absent
parents, Erron had come to learn to occupy himself and as such he developed an
uncomfortable social life. His soft voice and timid behaviour often caused him
to be teased as a child and his short build and clumsy, stilted walk never
allowed him to become ingratiated with the more popular and outgoing children.

Erron possessed a clearly intellectual bent and he had a very analytical and
logical mind, which was not uncommon given his
Erpheronian roots. He kept his
work areas neat and tidy at all times. Physical strength was not one Erron's
better qualities and as such he was unsuited to life in the
Erpheronian military. Therefore,
Erron turned his attention to intellectual pursuits such as reading books and
writing journals and short stories. He was known to have an excellent grasp of
the Aerpheriane dialect and his written notes on his study of
rats are well organized and detailed.

Erron also developed a love of animals, specifically all things that crawled,
slithered, scampered or squealed. He especially found snakes and insects
interesting but he came to revile rodents of any kind. This is possibly because
his home was rat infested and he witnessed the
terrible effects that the pests had on his family's lives.

Biography.Birth (180 a.S.). Erron Ratdweller was born into a
peasant family, in the Nermeran capitol of
Nyermersys, on a sunny
Gnomesday,
Changing Winds, in 180 a.S. He
was an only child to an herbalist/healer mother, a member of the
Order of the White Knights, and a mostly
unemployed father. His mother had a difficult pregnancy, and was often sick and
bedridden for days at a time. When Erron was born, his mother was in labour
alone for several hours, while his father, as usual, was spending his time and
the family's money at the local tavern. His mother's screams of pain brought a
neighbour woman who assisted in the birth of Erron. The baby was tiny, probably
born too early, weighing close to 5
ods.

Youth (185 a.S. - 201 a.S.). Erron grew up under
the harshness of a typical peasant life. For a time, his family's only source of
income was his mother's skill at herbalism. She was a healer and amateur
alchemist and a member of the Order of the
White Knights. She would hand pick various kinds of flowers, herbs and
plants and sell them for medicinal purposes. She would prepare such native
plants as the tooth cabbage, the
kheem plant and the
red berry bush. Erron observed how she
would carefully pick the most healthy plants and prepare them by drying or
mixing them into various concoctions. She kept a journal of herbal "receipts"
that she added to as she learned new ways to use the plants. Because of her job
as a healer and her membership in the Order,
she was a respected citizen and her skills insured a steady, if meager, income
for the family.

As a child, Erron was aloof and quiet. His parents never encouraged him to
associate with others as they were socially inept as well. Instead, Erron was
taught at home through the age of ten. His mother recognized his intellectual
mind and he learned how to read and write with enthusiasm. She also taught him
organizational skills and record keeping. These skills would come into use later
in Erron's life when he began his research into
rats.

Erron's father was a drunkard and rarely assisted in the education of his son.
He once was a dashing soldier in the military until a training accident left him
partially blind and limp. He lost all motivation for life thereafter and was
content to letting his wife become the chief income earner. However, the one
thing that his father was good at was creating traps for the
rats that infested their house. Erron's mother
learned to create rudimentary poisons and baits to use with bait to lure the
pests while his father would place crude stick traps attached to baskets in
hopes of catching a rat before they could
devour the family's food. It was from these experiences that Erron came to know
rudimentary pest control methodology.

Adult (201 a.S.). Not only was his own house
plagued with rats but the entire city of
Nyermersys was plagued as well. It was a
constant problem among Erron's neighbours and the enterprising young man decided
to do something about it. He began by improving upon the traps and baits created
by his parents and used them in creative ways to catch the
rats.

He would first purchase fresh food, or sometimes fresh scraps, and place them in
a heavy basket or pail. The food was attached to a string that was attached to a
stick. When a rat attempted to eat or take the
bait, the stick would fall releasing the basket and thus trapping the
rat. Erron would then destroy the
rat.

However, he realized that he had to come up with a way to destroy the
rats' nest in order to fully control the
pests. For this, Erron knew he had to come up with a poison method where the
rat would take tainted bait back to its nest
for others to feed upon.

Revelation (204 a.S.). It was when Erron was 24
years old that his mother became gravely ill. Erron discovered that she had been
bitten by a rat that she had tried to chase
out of the kitchen. The bite wound became infected and she died shortly
thereafter. During her burial, Erron witnessed a peculiar sight. He noticed a
dog eating bits of scraps nearby. The scraps were laying amongst a dull, gray
coloured fungus. The animal was eating so quickly that it was also ingesting the
fungus. This would have not caught Erron's attention until he saw that, within
moments, the dog became violently ill. It hacked and coughed for several minutes
until it finally collapsed in death. Erron, ever curious, discovered why. The
scraps were pieces of beef but the fungus mixed in was toxic. After some
investigating among some of his mother's herbalist associates, they told him it
was a fungus known as Queprur's love
mushroom. If ingested, Queprur's
love causes intense hallucinations, violent illness and death.

The Business Grows (205 a.S.-210 a.S.). Erron
experimented with the rare Queprur's
love mushroom and found it growing in cemeteries, battlefields and other
places where the dead were interred. According to legend, the fungus was said to
feed on the agony of the slain, but Erron never gave the story any truth. He
also learned that the mushroom, when prepared and mixed in certain ways, was
used as a highly addictive trance drink. Thus, he was also able to buy some
samples from a few less than savory characters around the city. After some
experimentation, he eventually found the right combination of mushroom and bait
that effectively could kill a rat quickly while also being palatable for the
animal.

Erron made a name for himself as a rat
exterminator and quickly came to know a booming business in
Nyermersys. He never gave away his secret
bait recipe. He was called upon at all hours of the day to kill
rat infestations in homes, businesses and
public places.

One such place that Erron had yet to go was the sewers. He knew that
city rats
lived in the sewers and that it was one place where he had yet to attempt to
exterminate. He never enjoyed smelly dark places, but his work under buildings
and rat holes gave him the courage to explore
the sewers of Nyermersys and attempt to
eliminate the rats there.

Research (210 a.S-223 a.S.). He soon found hordes
of rats under the sewers and his poison
control worked well. After several attempts at exterminating the upper sewer
rats, he ventured into the lower sewers. It was here that he found a most
unusual race of rat. He discovered a single
rat that was a greenish-yellow colour and
behaved in a most aggressive manner. He named this particular
rat Dagaarn, after his father. He noted the
rat had a missing ear and rather than kill the
odd looking animal, he decided to cautiously follow it around to see if it would
lead him to its nest.

After several weeks, Erron made detailed records and maps of where this
green rat lived and went. Intrigued, Erron
made more and more frequent trips to the sewers to find the cause of the
green rat's condition.

During his years of study, he also came to know quite well the upper sewer
rats that were not green coloured. He named
these "city rats" and made maps of where they lived as well. He noted that the
green rats and
city rats rarely
encountered one another but he had yet to see what would happen if they did. He
decided to find out. He captured a city rat and let it loose in the green rat's
domain. After some watching, he saw the two types encounter each other. A fierce
fight broke out. Erron was shocked to see that the green rat produced a vile,
acidic blood that quickly ate the city rat's
flesh. The green rat's defense was
extraordinary and Erron knew that no poison could possibly affect this animal.
He named the green rat the "vile rat".

From then on, he studied the vile rat with
the goal of discovering just how and why the
vile rat came to be such a disease ridden creature. How does it survive? How
does it live? How does it reproduce? Erron learned all of these things and more
during his many ventures in the sewers with these
rats.

Death (223 a.S.). Erron's work among the
rats of
Nyermersys brought several dangers to himself but while he took all manner
of precaution to protect himself, in the end, it was his own subjects that did
him in.

It was one morning, on the 10th day of the
Awakening Earth, when Erron had
taken yet another trip down on the lower sewers to finish his study of the
mating practices of the vile rat when he
encountered a group of the animals attacking a vagrant man who had unwittingly
intruded upon a vile rat nest. The man was
old and helpless and Erron took it upon himself to aid the poor fellow. He
caught the rats' attention and they gave him
chase down a winding corridor. He intended to lead them upwards to the surface
areas where they would come into contact with some
city rats and perhaps give up
trying to chase him.

During the chase, Erron dropped his map and soon became lost. He was cornered
and the rats swarmed him, smelling the
poisoned bait in his tunic pockets. He was overcome and he died from the many
bite and claw wounds inflicted by the vile
rats as well as from their acidic blood. In the end, it was the pest that
killed the exterminator.

Importance.
If it wasn't for the work of Erron Ratdweller, the cities of Santharia might
still be plagued by rats of all kinds. Erron's research was eventually found and
assembled by one of his apprentices and submitted to various other researchers
and lore keepers and what they found was a truly extensive diary of a man
intrigued by the very same pests he came to destroy.

Over the years, Erron's method of pest extermination was improved upon and
adapted to other creatures such as birds, insects and other pests.

Ultimately, Erron Ratdweller's work provided insight into a previously unknown
creature viewed only as a plague and pest. The
city rat came to be known later
as a steed to Rat Brownies and
the vile rat's noxious vilique came to be
known to provide poison for use by
Kasumarii assassins. Master Erron Ratdweller, part time exterminator and
accidental researcher, died as he lived: among his tiny animal subjects.